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Media Contacts

Ministry of Mental Health and Addictions

Communications
250 213-7049

Backgrounders

Additional information about youth and early years supports

Facts about integrated child and youth teams:

  • Integrated child and youth teams will be located in 15 additional communities and hire 350 full-time workers across all health authorities, for a total of 20 throughout B.C.
  • Integrated child and youth teams will receive new workers in communities where teams are currently being established. These are Maple Ridge-Pitt Meadows, Comox, Richmond, Coast Mountains, and Okanagan-Similkameen.
  • People 18 and under can access teams by self-referral or through schools, primary care, community organizations, Foundry centres, First Nations communities, regional health authorities and the Ministry of Children and Family Development (MCFD).
  • Early access to care prevents problems from becoming larger, reduces wait times and reduces impacts on hospital and crisis care.

Facts about early years mental health services:

  • When possible, early childhood services will be located in the same communities as integrated child and youth teams.
  • An investment of $16.4 million over three years will add 63 full-time positions made up of a complement of professional services, including the following: family support worker, family interventionist, infant/Aboriginal infant development program consultant, MCFD infant mental health clinician and infant and early years interventionist.
  • Where services are already established, up to four full-time workers will be added, with 60 additional full-time workers provincewide.
  • Each community will add an infant mental health clinician located with the Ministry of Children and Family Development.
  • Early childhood services prevent mental health and substance use problems, reduce wait times and improve social-emotional development.
  • This funding enhancement aims to support children who may be experiencing social-emotional delays as a result of social factors or neurobiological factors by increasing access to services.